The Headford Lace Story

“Exceptionally powerful community storytelling” – 2021 Craol Achievement Awards judges.

This documentary reveals how a group of women in County Galway stumbled across a mostly forgotten history of lacemaking in their town, and how a tiny fragment of lace became the starting point for countless cultural and regenerative events and projects – and created a sisterhood along the way.

We hear the voices of many of the women involved in researching and promoting the story of the local lace industry, as well as artists and textile experts. There are also moving personal accounts of the support and friendship provided by the lace group itself.

The programme features music created in Headford, inspired by the lace story – from Mairéad Berrill, Headford Music Works, Drumadore, and 2018 RTÉ Folk Awards nominees The Whileaways. Huge thanks to them all!

It also includes a portion of 'Caritas Dei' from the album 'Chants of the Holy Spirit' by the Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola, used by kind permission. Thanks also to Aengus McMahon for providing additional audio, and to Ella Hassett of Headford Lace Project for the artwork.

The Headford Lace Story was produced for Claremorris Community Radio with funding from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland's Sound & Vision scheme, and was first aired on Claremorris Community Radio on 20th June 2021.

It won the Standout award in the Commissioned Programmes category at the 2021 Craol Achievement Awards, after also winning a Gold award in that category. The judges said it demonstrated "exceptionally powerful community storytelling, through the many voices captured, the delicacy of the heartfelt storytelling and exceptional production quality. It's clear that the production team worked hard to build trust and gather a huge range of interviews. The programme interweaves personal interviews, on-location audio, original music and carefully crafted scripted narration to immerse the listener in this intriguing local story. A great achievement for the whole team.”

The Headford Lace Project wrote on their blog: “Ed’s skill, passion, attention to detail, patience and perception guided us through this process and HLP are delighted with the result and its success at capturing the essence of our project at a moment in time.”

Transcript

The following transcript is also available to download as a PDF here.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha This programme was funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland with the television licence fee. Hello, my name is Eilís Nic Dhonncha. And I'm here to tell you a story about something that happened in the town I call home: Headford, County Galway. To begin this story, we're going to pick up two threads that first twisted together back in 2016. The first thread is a small picture of some needlework named in a local history book as 'Headford crochet'.

Sandra Joyce So it was a black and white photo. And I was studying it and looking at it thinking, "I know it says 'Headford crochet', but I don't, I'm not quite sure that it is crochet, it looks a little bit more like lace to me."

Eilís Nic Dhonncha This is Sandra Joyce. She's lived here all her life, but had never heard of such a thing as Headford crochet or Headford lace. So she asked around some older relatives, but no one knew anything.

Sandra Joyce Then I happened to be speaking to a friend of mine, Evelyn.

[DRUMMING MUSIC STARTS – Bobbin Beats by Drumadore and Claran Theatre]

Sandra Joyce And she said. "Leave it with me, I'll check". And she actually ended up knowing a member of the community that had some of the lace and handed me a piece of the original Headford lace. When she handed me the piece of lace, number one was shock that there was actually some of it in my hands. Took it out of the envelope. And I knew by looking at it that I didn't think that it was crochet, that it was actual lace, but what type of lace, or anything like that I don't, wouldn't know. My first instinctive reaction was like, I'm not quite sure what to do with this piece – only mind it with my life. It was so pretty and delicate and had survived however many years and now it was in my hands. All I knew at that time was like, well, I have to mind it. So that's how I ended up being the custodian over this very, very small and magical piece of history.

Selma Makela I'm Selma Makela, and I'm an artist based in County Galway in Headford.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Selma is our second thread. In 2016, my friend Ester and I were planning an event for the Galway bid to be European Capital of Culture. And we contacted Selma to be involved.

Selma Makela And the brief I was given was just some kind of trail through the town. Because the centre of Headford was looking very neglected, and it was full of cars. And this feeling of– what could we do as a community of artists to re-ignite the town centre and just have people walking through it?

Drumadore and Claran Theatre (SINGING) You’ll be there by candlelight!

[DRUMMING MUSIC REACHES A CRESCENDO THEN STOPS]

Selma Makela That was the brief.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Selma bases much of her art on huge amounts of research into local heritage. And she also saw mention of historical lacemaking in Headford.

Selma Makela I think I told Ester or Eilís that I was researching the lace, and somebody came forward and said they had this fragment of lace.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha And that somebody was Sandra. Our two threads are crossing one another.

Ester Kiely When we heard that Sandra had a piece of lace, I think we might have had a phone conversation saying could she show it to us. My name is Ester Kiely, I'm a textile artist. I live between Headford and Tuam. And she had a little sample I would say six inches long, about one inch wide. And she just took out the envelope showed it to us. And we went, "Oh my god, you know, you have a piece of this lace," and "Is there more?" And "Are there other types? And do you know anything else about it?" And she said, "I don't really..." and so it was really exciting just to see–

Sandra Joyce and now

Selma Makela and this

Ester Kiely that piece of lace

Sandra Joyce that little

Selma Makela fragment of lace

Sandra Joyce that tiny little piece of lace

Ester Kiely it was such a small fragment

Selma Makela you know

Sandra Joyce has been

Ester Kiely has had the power to inspire

Sandra Joyce a catalyst for such a major, major project

Selma Makela a whole community of people.

Ester Kiely You know, it gave us more questions than answers really.

Sandra Joyce And you can see reflections of that piece of lace

Selma Makela it's very

Sandra Joyce in our community

Selma Makela vibrant and powerful

Ester Kiely and

Selma Makela there' s been a recipe that's just worked

Sandra Joyce I had no idea

Ester Kiely I'd heard of Carrickmacross, Clones, Kenmare, Youghal, Limerick

Sandra Joyce of the history of Headford lace

Ester Kiely I'd heard of all of those laces

Sandra Joyce I'm from here

Ester Kiely I'd never once heard of Headford lace

Sandra Joyce I had no idea of it.

Ester Kiely And I live six miles away.

Selma Makela And I was saying to Ester, "Wouldn't it be amazing if we could, that lace could be used again to revive Headford?" Ester was like already thinking like that.

Ester Kiely It just struck me that if every other town that had a rich heritage in lacemaking celebrated it in some way–

[MUSIC STARTS – The Whileaways Toss the Bobbin (instrumental version)]

Ester Kiely –that Headford had some story that it could also delve deeper into, and do something with it. How come we stopped talking about it? And where would we find the history if we started looking?

Selma Makela So we decided to create the lace project.

Sandra Joyce And what they have done in unearthing all of this information is phenomenal.

Selma Makela It's brought pride. I mean, there are so many things that bring pride to Headford, I mean there's so much going on there. But this particular project, I think people are proud of it.

Sandra Joyce I look at it now and think, well that that's Headford, that's part of Headford.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha That event for the Galway bid – The Nesting Lark – it drew together the whole community in reimagining what a small town like Headford could be in the wake of recessions and emigration. Lace was just one tiny part of The Nesting Lark. But we hoped that a lace project could help continue that collaboration, and make our town even better. But all we had was one scrap of lace, and none of us knew how to make it.

Jackie Magnin I was sent an email with a picture of the original piece of Headford lace.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha This is Jackie Magnin, from Cork, an expert lacemaker. And the picture had been sent to her by Ester.

Jackie Magnin I looked at it. And her question was: "Can you do anything with this?" So, yeah, it is a fairly simple type of lace, it is torchon bobbin lace, which is a fairly straightforward type of lace.

[SOUNDS OF BOBBIN LACE MAKING – WOODEN BOBBINS RATTLING TOGETHER AND BEING DROPPED ONTO THE PILLOW AS THEIR THREADS ARE CROSSED AND TWISTED]

Jackie Magnin There are a limited number of stitches used in Headford Lace. The torchon laces are very mathematical. They're constructed on diagonal lines. So it's not that – or, for me at least – it's not that hard to make up a pattern of an existing piece when I have a good photograph of it. Bobbin lace is basically like weaving. Because instead of having a loom with the threads and the warps and the wefts, you have your threads on bobbins. You need a surface to work on – that's a pillow of some form. And you need a pattern, a pricking pattern, that shows you where your threads are going to go. But you have threads, usually worked in pairs, and those pairs cross and twist into one another. And they go back and forth, like you would in weaving. And it was a great thrill to be able to reconstruct that piece from the original and think that it was just the way that it would've be made well over 100 years ago, for the last time, and has never been made since – until I made it again.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Jackie became our tutor and we started running bobbin lace workshops. A lost skill was returning to Headford and there was a waiting list for places. More people joined the committee, and brought skills that we needed, like historical research.

Norma Owens The first workshop I got onto was in July '17. The AGM was the following January, but by then I was at everything they did, all the time. So it was just like, fine, come on, just yeah, they couldn't get rid of me.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Norma Owens So I'm Norma Owens, and I am the research and communications officer – or one of the research and communications officers – for the Headford lace project. The project had started before I got involved, and there was definitely research done by the other girls, Ella in particular.

Ella Hassett So I'm Ella Hassett. I'm on the Headford Lace Project committee, and I work as a librarian full time in London. When people ask about our graphic design, Eilís says, "Oh, our London branch deals with that." So that's nice. I also support Norma on research stuff. She's the primary researcher, 100%. But I kind of keep an eye out for little tidbits that I can find.

Norma Owens And the census is probably the first port of call. But it wasn't particularly useful because unless the woman was single or widowed, her occupation wouldn't be listed, even if she was the main breadwinner in the house. So if she was married, she would just be crossed out, just a dash through her occupation, or it would just say 'Housewife' or 'Wife'. So some lacemakers could be identified from the census, but not many. And then some of the historical records, there were various surveys of the country done, and they would have mentioned bobbin lacemaking as one of the industries in the area.

Ella Hassett And I was also able to find some bits and pieces in the Victoria & Albert, the V & A. You know, Norma can't travel all over the place to go to these things, so it was handy that I was there to be able to just pop in and check these things out. Obviously, that wouldn't uncover much in terms of the the Irish women who were making the lace, but it would uncover stuff about the Anglo-Irish side of it, and the wealthier families and patrons and all that, because some of their history would be recorded in documents over here.

Norma Owens And in Dublin in 1865, there was an exhibition. And this is probably one of our main sources for the origins. It talked about– there was Headford lace in the exhibition, and they sent some correspondents out to the different areas that the items were coming in for the exhibition, and they talked about Headford and their visit to Headford.

[MUSIC RETURNS – The Whileaways Toss the Bobbin (instrumental version)]

Norma Owens And what they said in 1865 was about 100 years ago, one of the ladies of the St. George family established a school for lacemaking in the town. So that puts us back to about 1765 or so.

Ella Hassett Some of the difficulties would be that aspect of women's history not being written down necessarily, or the voices of the poor women who were making the lace just weren't recorded anywhere. You wouldn't even necessarily have the voices of the wealthy patrons, the St. George women, either. You'd have the voices of their husbands or their uncles, or that kind of thing, but not their voices themselves. So that, that can be tricky to find out.

Norma Owens It's, it's frustrating, but it also sort of gives me a mission, I suppose.

Ella Hassett The sort of digging-around bit I quite enjoy. And as a librarian full-time that is my job, is digging out information for people.

Norma Owens And then the first contemporary record of lacemaking was in 1790, when Richard St. George Mansergh–St. George, of Headford Castle, had returned after being injured in the American Revolution fighting for the British Empire. And he was writing about the state of affairs in Headford. And he wrote, "The women of Headford make lace." So that was 1790, and that was contemporary.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Ella Hassett It's the lack of women talking about their own experiences is what I've found. It means when we do find something, we've had to work quite hard to find it. So Norma discovered some information about Queen Victoria having purchased some Headford lace, which was an incredible thing to find.

Norma Owens We knew that there was a bit of a resurgence during the famine, but it didn't really make sense. You know why, during the famine, would the industry have got a boost? And now we understand that that boost actually came from a purchase of lace by Queen Victoria. With the famine, there was obviously a need for some sort of regeneration, and generation of income in the town. And the lacemaking was seen as the way to do that. And it happened all over Ireland, they are what we call 'famine laces'. And it would've been the convents in a lot of places that would have brought it in as a poor relief scheme during the famine. In Headford, it was through Mrs. Julia Jackson. She was the wife of the local Church of Ireland rector. And we know that a petition went to Queen Victoria to help the lacemakers of the town, and she did invest £20 in the Headford lace industry. We know that that would have purchased about a mile of lace. So that would have kept people pretty busy for a pretty long time and been a pretty significant boost.

Ella Hassett Now, obviously, there's mixed feelings about that, because they could have just given money to people who were starving. But anyway, it's a kind of– it's great in a way, and to have the news release that says a piece of Headford lace was purchased by Queen Victoria is quite incredible.

Norma Owens And we know that by 1847, there were hundreds of people employed in lacemaking, at the peak of the famine, when a fever epidemic was also rampant in the area. The whole story about women coming together during the famine, and building and regenerating an industry, at a time when the country was on its knee, is something I'd never known about in school. And it really did help sustain people during the famine but, because it's a women's history, it's not something that's widely known at all. And one of the things that's written about it – and, as I say, the history of women was up until quite recently written by men – and it's quite interesting, because there is one book. It's called The Lacemakers, by Susanna Meredith, and it's written by a woman, and it gives a very different sort of interpretation of things. But she talks about the real social change that was brought about during the famine, by the fact that women of different social classes and different religions – both of which were very kind of tense relations in Ireland at the time – that the lacemaking bridge those divides, that all of those people worked together towards a common goal, and were successful, and broke down those bonds. I think that's hugely significant, and is majorly overlooked.

Ella Hassett I feel that a lot of information about Headford lace, and the industry and all that, I feel that a lot of it is in archives somewhere.

[MUSIC STARTS – Mairéad Berrill and Headford Music Works, Lace Threads, recorded live at the Lace Notes event in Headford, September 2019]

Ella Hassett It's written down, it's not been digitised, it's not been indexed, and we can't find it so readily. It's totally worth it. All the digging around and scrabbling around to find stuff is worth it when you come across that one piece of information. The one that I love that I found, it took me a long time going through archive.org records, and going kind of Ctrl-F-ing 'Headford' as often as I could. I found a piece about the Manchester Jubilee exhibition in 1887. So there was a piece of Headford lace in that. And I was days and days and days like not even going to bed because I was just so excited to try and find a piece of information relating to Headford lace. And I finally came upon this thing that said, "A piece of Headford lace, done by Mrs. Burke, Ower, Headford, Co. Galway" in the exhibition, and it was just the most amazing moment. I went running in to my partner to tell him that I found it, so it's totally worth it. It's tough, but it's worth it when you do find something that's really, really useful.

Norma Owens You know, you find something, and it gives you another clue and you can't walk away from the story when you have this clue burning, you know, waiting to be more fully explained.

Teresa Eagleton And now we get to what could be described as the start of the cottages.

[MUSIC ENDS]

[BIRDSONG AND CROWS CALLING ON NEW STREET, HEADFORD]

Teresa Eagleton My name is Teresa Eagleton. I moved to Headford in the late 1970s with my husband.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha We're on New Street, where Teresa owns one of the small houses here known as 'the lacemakers' cottages'. They were very basic, built by the St. Georges to house the families of estate workers. Nowadays we've put an information board there with a quote Teresa knows well. It's from the autumn of 1845, when the writer E. Harvey Wadge passed through our town–

[MUSIC RETURNS – Mairéad Berrill and Headford Music Works, Lace Threads, recorded live at the Lace Notes event in Headford, September 2019]

Eilís Nic Dhonncha –and he wrote: "It was then like a hive of bees in summer, full of joy and activity, and the hum noise of industry..."

Teresa Eagleton "... at some of the cottage doors were groups of neatly dressed young girls seated on low stools, their lace pillows on their laps, and while their fingers moved rapidly through the maze of bobbins, their voices filled the air if not with melody, at least with heart music. Further on might be seen a couple of elderly women whose hands had not yet forgotten their cunning, working out intricate, if not graceful patterns, or perhaps a young mother seated within the doorway, her foot gently moving a cradle while her fingers plied their busy task." It makes it sound lovely, doesn't it? But was it was hard work. They had the job of keeping this lace spotlessly and scrupulously clean. That meant they had to keep their hands washed. Now during the famine that would have played a very important role in preventing disease. At the time, it wouldn't generally have been recognised that clean hands prevented disease, because didn't know what caused disease really. The other thing that's of interest here is the money they made from it: "Eight yards of Headford lace – two shillings." Now break that down. Two shillings was 24 pence, eight yards. That's three pennies a yard; that is one penny a foot. That is what the agent got. Now what did the ladies get? You know, so it was very hard work for very, very little recompense.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Alex Ward Lace has always been a kind of luxurious kind of fabric. And it's one of the ways throughout history that you've been, you know that wealthy individuals show off their, their wealth, through their clothing. And from really, I suppose the 16th century on, both men and women would have you know used lace to kind of display their wealth. I'm Alex Ward. I'm the curator of the dress and textile collection at the National Museum of Ireland, Decorative Arts and History, which is based in Collins Barracks in Dublin. It all ended up in Irish lace became incredibly fashionable in the sort of late 19th and early 20th century. And laces like Limerick and Carrickmacross were seen as very suitable for sort of young society brides. And this is all partly to do with these kind of high society women who took it upon themselves to kind of promote Irish laces, and quite often would have held these kind of textile exhibitions in their London townhouses to promote Irish laces. And Irish lace become so popular at that period that it's actually sold as 'real Irish lace' – 'real' in inverted commas, because it begins to be kind of imitated elsewhere. The really good examples that we have in the museum already, we know where they've come from. So we know they're pieces of lace that have been made in Florence Vere O'Brien's Limerick lace school or the Youghal lace cooperative in Cork, that kind of thing. So I think that information is obviously very important. But I mean, there's a lot of lace out there where there's none of that information. It's just pieces of lace that have been passed down through families or whatever. And there's no information about who made them, or where they came from, or even who might have worn them or used them or, or anything.

Ger Henry Hassett Since I joined Headford Lace Project, we have been donated 189 lace items–

Eilís Nic Dhonncha This is Ger Henry Hassett, our librarian and archivist.

Ger Henry Hassett –and every little piece has a different story. Every piece of lace has a material memory of the person that made it, and holds the spirit of those people. So each piece is precious, and we value them all. One piece is a doily with a hole in it and beside the hole there is a practice piece of darning. So some woman was learning how to darn, and instead of dumping this piece of fabric, she kept it and she used it as a practice piece, or to show her family how to do it, or her daughter's how to darn, because this was an important skill in its day, because clothing wasn't disposed of. Everything was kept, and mended.

[ANNE O’HARA QUINN GIVING A TALK] Why did lacemaking fail? It was lacking in design; fashions change; the famine would have interfered and…

Anne O'Hara Quinn Yeah, my name is Anne O'Hara Quinn, and I'm the education officer for the Headford Lace Project.

[ANNE O’HARA QUINN GIVING A TALK] …There was competition at all times from machine-made lace, and thus the market diminished…

Anne O'Hara Quinn We've held workshops in the Galway City Museum. We've held workshops in the National Museum of Ireland in Turlough House. We've worked with Foxford Woollen Mills and in Castle Hackett House. We've also been out to Kylemore Abbey. Myself personally, I’m a private collector, but I have very specific interest in church lace.

[ANNE O’HARA QUINN GIVING A TALK] ...The nuns have a long established history of lacemaking in Ireland. Lace was usually made for the church, or for priests' vestments or altar vestments…

Anne O'Hara Quinn I suppose it was traditionally done by nuns, really. So it was previously called 'the nun's work', and I guess whilst in the case of the St. George family, you know, they passed it on to the local women, that was more unusual. It was perhaps more in the convents–

[MUSIC STARTS – Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola, Caritas Dei]

Anne O'Hara Quinn –you know, that the nuns done it for the honour and glory of God. Some of the very beautiful church lace was buried with the canons and the bishops, because they were obviously buried in their best.

Sister Madeleine Cleverly I'm afraid I'll have to use a few religious terms, you'll have to bend with the fact that I am a practising nun. I'm Sister Madeleine, and I'm from an ecumenical Benedictine community in the United States. And I'm staying for two years with the Benedictine Sisters at Kylemore Abbey, and doing lace.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Sister Madeleine Cleverly Our particular community in the United States tries to preserve some of the old crafts and arts that went on in the monasteries in the 14th and 15th century, be it painting, be it icon, poetry. So lace is one of the textiles that was done. And my prioress in the United States, ten years ago now, I got a telephone call, that said, "I'd like you to learn lace." I thought to myself, "Lace? I don't know anything about lace!" But it turns out that all the ecclesiastical vestments from the 14th and 15th century, all had lace trim. So my prioress wanted to preserve this old monastery craft. Well, the journey was rather fascinating. Because, of course, with the internet, you can research just about anything these days. But my first foray into finding a lace teacher, I found that most of them were either 110 or dead already. Eventually, through a stroke of divine intervention, if you will – or luck, if you like that term better – I did manage to find a lace group that was an hour for me. And then I spent three years with the Benedictine Sisters in Bruges, Belgium. At one time, every sister in that convent did lace. Now there's only one remaining sister, who's 84 years old, and she does beautiful lace, but there is only one who continues to do lace.

[MUSIC RETURNS – Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola, Caritas Dei]

Eilís Nic Dhonncha In Bruges, Sister Madeleine met some nuns visiting from Kylemore Abbey, and wondered if she might be able to continue her lace journey in Ireland.

Sister Madeleine Cleverly When I found I was coming to Kylemore, they were willing to have me, I was looking for a lace group.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Sister Madeleine Cleverly The only name I knew was the Dublin Lace Group – Ann Keller – and I said to Ann, I'm going to be out at Kylemore Abbey, and she said, "Are you ever in luck! They have just started a group out there – Headford Lace Project. I'm going to put you in touch." So it's been terribly exciting for me–

[MUSIC RETURNS – Gloriae Dei Cantores Schola, Caritas Dei]

Sister Madeleine Cleverly –to be able to be part of this group. And they welcomed me with open arms and they just, you know, I hope I've been a blessing to them. I do know quite a bit about lace and I think that has been a blessing. I was able to, you know, help them as they are beginning lacemakers learning to do Headford lace. And so it's been a bit of a home away from home. I've loved it.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Jackie Magnin Bobbin lace died out in Ireland quite early on. There were machines invented to make bobbin lace with, and they could do a very good job and it was very hard to see the difference. In fact, in the olden days in the machine-made lace, they often put tiny little glitches in to make people believe that it was hand made, and therefore they could ask more money for it. The laces they developed, and that we now know as the Irish laces, were either crochet or needle laces and they were a lot easier to teach. So this would be a reason why bobbin lace isn't really very much alive any more. And that's what we are trying to do here is to make it again into a living craft.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha When we make lace now, most of us are using cotton thread, but the Headford lace industry would have relied on linen. We know flax was grown all around here, and evidence for it has been found right under our feet.

Peggy Sharkey I'm Peggy Sharkey. I live in Ellagh, near Headford. The house that I grew up in was a thatched house in Ballyhale, which is one of the townlands in this parish. And a new house was built in the late 50s. And then sometime later on, the old house was demolished. And there was found, just at the foundations, a hank of flax, raw flax, unbleached, unspun, just fibres. And it was a hank about a foot long I should think, and it was a yellowish colour. My mother rescued it. There was a tradition to put something valuable in the foundations when you were building a house. In my youth in the 50s, my uncle was having a new house built. And people would ask him, "Are you– have you got any sovereigns put in the foundations?" And I mean, sovereigns weren't, weren't very plentiful. So I think that was the idea that you put in something valuable in the foundations to ensure, you know, prosperity or whatever. And presumably, at that time, which would have been the 1700s when that was built, I should think, flax was obviously being grown around the place or they were hoping to grow it anyway. And that was the reason they put it in, just to ensure something good in the future.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha It's funny the things we do in the hope of prosperity. Headford is half an hour from Galway city. Most mornings, fifty per cent of the people who live here drive down the road to work. In the past, it was different.

[MUSIC STARTS – The Whileaways Toss the Bobbin (instrumental version)]

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Local businesses kept people and their earnings in the community.

Margie McNamara My name is Margie McNamara. I was Margie Fahy, in my single days. And I'm a native of Headford, County Galway. Well Headford is mainly a one-street town, kind of a straight Street. And as things are at the moment now, there isn't an awful lot of business in the main street, like some of the businesses have closed. And most of it is focused kind of around the supermarket now. And there was no supermarkets when I was a child, there were all small shops, small family shops. In the main street that time, you had several pubs; we had two shoemakers; about three butchers; we had a tailor; a hardware shop; there was a family then that did a milk round; a big drapery shop in the middle of the town; you had another shop that was kind of light household hardware and toys and paint; then there was a hotel up in the middle of the town; there was a dentist that used to come from Ballinrobe on a Tuesday afternoon. There was a fair day every month. After the deals were made and the hand slapping was over, you know, there'd be a lot of noise coming out of the pubs. There were no takeaways. We must have about four or five takeaways in Headford now, I'd say. We often talk here people that grew up with me, now, of all the houses that had kids, you know, and families of children, huge group, big families, you know four, five, seven or eight, you know, there were children in every other house from one end to the other of the town. And that's something now that you definitely wouldn't have anymore. There isn't same vibrancy when you haven't kids out playing on footpath with each other, or running around to each other's houses. You know that was the way it was in those days, you know? So, so much life in the place. You don't have that anymore. You have kind of an older population, people tend to move away when they grow up and qualify for something.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha We all want to do something to stop that spiral of abandoned town centres and businesses closing, to make rural Ireland better for our kids, for ourselves, for each other. And in Headford, that process has already begun. It's not the work of one or two people, it's a whole town pulling together, because we can all see the potential.

Venetia McEllin There’s two wrought iron gates here, and as we go in we see the John the Baptist church in front of us. But there's a big, this big field now – the church is behind it. My name is Venetia McEllin, and I'm involved with the Headford Environment Group and have been for the last 10 years. And we're always looking for new projects, new biodiversity projects that we can take on.

[JACKDAWS CALLING IN THE GROUNDS OF JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH, HEADFORD]

Venetia McEllin We have 35 different trees and mostly heritage. So we'd have plum and we'd have apple. We have cobnuts and we have cherry and we have medlar.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Venetia moved here 30 years ago. She's been involved in various groups over that time, but for her The Nesting Lark in 2016, that kicked off the lace project, also marked a change in how things were achieved in Headford.

Venetia McEllin It was brilliant because lots of groups got involved and they all came together. Because what you used to find in with groups was they'd all be working on their own, not actually communicating with each other. But we, I think what's happened is that groups now collaborate more. And one of the things we did was agree with the lace group to– they wanted to put a bench in. And we said, we'd love that. It'd be great to have something in the corner here. Beautiful. I'm taking you– I'm going over to the lace garden now and the lace garden, it’s a kind of a little corner of the orchard and it's not very big, but at the back of it, there's the lacemakers’ bench, which you must see because the back of the bench is actually the pattern of the old Headford lace. So you've got this circular or semi-circular bench at the back, painted white with lace around the top of it. And then each side of that there are beds with white flowers, all the white flowers we could find. And so it's a lovely, lovely corner. And so many people come here now and use it. And it's just a very, very peaceful spot. There's a sense of calmness and stillness in here, which is really nice. We're very, we're very proud of it.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha The lace bench, made by Connor and Paddy Murray of Kilkee Forge, has now been joined by another, at the top of the town. So far since 2016, we've used the lace as a starting point for collaborations, with all kinds of artists and makers – too many to name them all. But I would like you to meet one of them, an internationally renowned artist

Róisín de Buitléar I’m working on a large scale sculpture for the centre of the town in Headford. My name is Róisín de Buitléar and I am an artist based in Dublin.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Róisín answered our open call for a piece of lace-related public art. And her submission was chosen largely because she wanted to bring the community on board with the design.

Róisín de Buitléar We went to the local hotel there and invited local people from all parts of the community, from the gardening groups, from the knitting groups, from some of the social groups that are there, even if they weren't involved in the Headford Lace Project in any way. So the sculpture is going to be two and a half metres tall, and it's going to be situated right in the middle of the town. And it is an interactive piece which will be threaded like a piece of lace. The piece can be restrung in many different ways, and that contribution from the community can continue in that people can make proposals for threading the piece in a different way. And I think that's what's really fascinating for me about the Headford Lace Project is that being, having this openness to look at lace as a vehicle to communicate different ideas is really inspiring.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Through the project, our connection to the people who came before us has become more tangible, and the town has started to feel different. People from outside the area can see it and it draws them back here.

Colette Kelly Well, Colette Kelly is my name. And I suppose I'm a granny, I’m retired, professional. I always had an interest in sewing, knitting, crochet, craft, all– every craft work I could put my hands on when I was growing up. And I suppose it’s my hobby now.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha It may be a hobby but Colette, who lives in Oranmore, travels all over Ireland to needlework groups. And she's been a regular since her first workshop in Headford, when she saw something special in this project.

Colette Kelly It just really wasn’t about lace, it was about the area and the revival of their history.

[MUSIC STARTS – The Whileaways and Headford Music Works performing Where the Black River Flows, written by The Whileaways, recorded live at the Lace Notes event in Headford, September 2019]

Colette Kelly And I just thought they were very dedicated people, you know, I was just drawn to their dedication and their enthusiasm, and their, their love for their town and its surroundings.

The Whileaways and Headford Music Works (SINGING) Where the Black River flows to the Corrib, and the waters are deep and still, where the limestone is stacked stone on stone, between every field and hill…

Eilís Nic Dhonncha That love isn't limited to people who were born here – far from it. Most of our committee, for example, aren't natives of Headford. And there's one of us in particular who says she can divide her life into ‘Before Headford Lace Project’ and ‘After Headford Lace Project’, so deeply was she changed by it.

Giuliana Victor Harte Ready to go!

Eilís Nic Dhonncha This is Giuliana.

Giuliana Victor Harte I’m Giuliana Victor Harte.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha She was our first PRO. She's from Brazil, and she moved to Caherlistrane in 2014 with her Irish husband Simon. Caherlistrane is only five kilometres from Headford, but Giuliana doesn't drive. She found it tough.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Giuliana Victor Harte So I came from a huge city, that’s São Paolo. So, lots of buses and traffic and, you know, people. I was– I used to work in a hotel. But before that I was a producer with events. And so I work with carnival, F1 and, a kind of Culture Night but it’s a weekend. So it was Brazil, Galway, and Caherlistrane. So, it was hard. Very lonely, very lonely. It wasn't months. It was years. It was two years of no one around, no one– I just– it's hard because when you're not local, it’s, it’s, it's not that Irish people are not welcoming. It's not like that. You are very welcome, but in a countryside, when you're not local… you’re not local. So people are very difficult to interact with you, you know?

[MUSIC RETURNS – The Whileaways and Headford Music Works performing Where the Black River Flows, written by The Whileaways, recorded live at the Lace Notes event in Headford, September 2019]

Giuliana Victor Harte And then after two years, it started buzz of Galway 2020. And then I say to my husband, “That's my thing! And we have something in Headford, so very close to us.” I told my husband, “I am going to be part of it. And he say, “No you’re not.” I say, “Yes, I am. I am pretty sure I am going to make the contacts. I want to meet people. I want to be part of it. That's so important, look at that!”

Eilís Nic Dhonncha The problem was they only had one car, and Giuliana didn’t drive. She had to watch The Nesting Lark from home, on Facebook. She was heartbroken.

The Whileaways and Headford Music Works (SINGING) …for their pretty petticoats and never thought of the women who made Headford lace…

Giuliana Victor Harte Then one day Simon and I were on the way to Galway. We saw a dog, he was lost. So we stopped the car, because he could’ve been killed. So we start to knocking the doors and, “Please, this is, this is your dog?” and, “No, it's not.” So we say, so what are we going to do? Like we can’t bring the dog to our house. And then suddenly a friend of Simon stop: “Simon, what you doing here with the dog?” And blah blah blah, and we say, “Do you know this dog?” “Well, I don't know, but I know someone.”

Eilís Nic Dhonncha That someone was Ester. She took in the stray dog – and she took in Giuliana too.

Giuliana Victor Harte And then my life changed, because then Ester brought me to see the Yarnbombers, and then when I got the Yarnbombers I met the rest of the gang. So I start to living in 2016. That's how I got into the community. That's how I knew all about lace, and crazy people and lovely people. And so it's, it's completely changed my life. So I say to you, and I say to everyone who ask: that dog that I met on the road that night, it was an angel who connect me to Ester and changed my life. And that's now it's, it's impossible not to be emotion about that. I, I never tired to say that Headford lace saved my life and, and all the women, all these amazing women, we are not only a committee group. We are sisters.

[MUSIC ENDS]

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Sisterhood. This is the word that comes up again and again for us. There's always something going on with the project. And we're all so involved in our different areas, but when one of us is going through something tough, the others take over their tasks and we give them space. It happened with Ester in 2018, when her brother died.

Ester Kiely It was so sudden. He was only 59. He hadn't been ill. It was a complete shock. And then it would have taken me a really long time to feel that I wanted to be doing anything. You know, when I came back, I wasn't in the mood for get-togethers or, you know, anything. And– but the great thing about the group in that instance was the friendship, you know, the fact that they were all there. And you knew that, that they were there to invite you back in when you wanted to. And they were going to leave you alone if you didn't want it, you know? So, I know that has been a help to, to all of us, you know, we've all had different things that have come up for us over the last three or four years. And typically there's just enough going on that it's hard, it's hard for you to stay in a funk if you get into one, you know? And I think, I think the social element of it has been huge for all of us.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha And we were there for Norma later that same year.

Norma Owens So I had had a miscarriage at the end of November. And it was unusual in that I went in for a three-month scan, having had a seven-week scan and knowing that I was carrying healthy twins, went in for my 12-week scan and was told that neither twin had a heartbeat anymore. And yeah, it just floored me. And one of the reasons I am keen to talk about it is because I feel like something– it’s something that people don't talk about, and that made it really difficult because you kind of didn't know what was the most appropriate way to deal with it, because you didn't think you knew of anybody else that had gone through it. And there's a sense of shame and secrecy around it. Like, I hadn't even told most people that I was pregnant, so then you're dealing with a thing like, do I tell them, ‘Well I was pregnant and now I’m not,’ or do I just continue the secrecy? So I was left in this just, I don't know, limbo. I had decided to be open about the miscarriage. Like initially, like I say, I struggled with what to do, but I decided to be open about it because one of the difficulties in dealing with it was the secrecy that generally surrounds it. And the funny thing is that it made other people feel very awkward, I felt. They didn't know what to say to me, or they didn't know how to behave around me. And very few– I feel like people avoided me a little bit for a while and that's completely understandable, but you know, the girls came and they came and they visited and they brought a pack of biscuits and we just sat down and we talked about it, and it meant so much when so few people did that, that they did that.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Two months later, there was a plan for the group to visit the National Museum. As it happened, it turned out to be the moment of a really important discovery for us, but Norma wasn't able to be there in person.

Norma Owens I was due for a follow-up appointment with the hospital. And they were brilliant. They had ran a battery of tests to try and figure out what had gone wrong. So the day before, I got a phone call to say the hospital appointment was cancelled. And I still didn't go to the museum cos I was just feeling so depressed over everything.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha But we’re sisters. Sisters with a WhatsApp group. So we kept Norma up to speed as the day unfolded.

Ger Henry Hassett We went to the National Museum, Collins’s Barracks

Sister Madeleine Cleverly where there are examples of bobbin lace

Ger Henry Hassett and we met with the textile curator there. A good few of us went up.

Ester Kiely There were, I think, five of us there that day in Collins Barracks.

[DRUMMING MUSIC STARTS – Bobbin Beats by Drumadore and Claran Theatre]

[ALEX WARD’S KEYS JANGLING]

[ALEX WARD IN THE MUSEUM] So I've come up with stairs now and I'm just outside the door into…

Ester Kiely Alex Ward, the textiles curator, had taken a selection of lace items out of the National Museum collection to show us.

[ALEX WARD LEADING US THROUGH HEAVY DOORS AND BEEPING ENTRY SYSTEMS INTO THE TEXTILE STORAGE AREA] …and we have a second internal door, which is a firedoor…

Jackie Magnin And because we were especially interested in bobbin lace, she gathered up for us a big collection of what they have in the museum in bobbin lace.

Alex Ward I do remember that visit, and my recollection of it was that they asked to see examples of pillow lace.

Ester Kiely But when we went up, she had taken out some Irish laces, not necessarily from Galway, but just Irish laces in general, she had taken out some bobbin laces that weren't even necessarily Irish.

Jackie Magnin Now, they would be very fancy pieces and imports from France and from England, they have a fabulous collection.

Ester Kiely and she had taken out some things from the west of Ireland. So, in the hope that somewhere there’d be something in there of interest. It was all of interest to us, everything.

Alex Ward But I do remember, on the day, they were all quite excited.

Ester Kiely And we were having a lovely time looking at these pieces of lace and sure we were just happy to be there and just be looking at lace and comparing, what have you got? You've got some Carrickmacross, some Limerick, you've got continental laces here. What's in the catalog for that piece? And, you know, it was all very interesting. And then

Jackie Magnin but at the very end of the– her showing us all the pieces of lace, she unwrapped one piece

[DRUMMING STOPS]

Jackie Magnin and it still gets to me now

Ester Kiely There were seven pieces

Jackie Magnin there were seven strips in there

Giuliana Victor Harte seven new patterns

Ester Kiely that had been donated by a Mrs. Dawson

Jackie Magnin that were actually made in Cong.

Giuliana Victor Harte Bobbin lace

Ester Kiely from Cong.

Ger Henry Hassett Cong lace

Jackie Magnin bobbin lace

Giuliana Victor Harte from Cong!

Sister Madeleine Cleverly It was like

Giuliana Victor Harte uhhhhh

Sister Madeleine Cleverly there was a moment of excitement there.

Giuliana Victor Harte Cong is like, in the end of the road, like it's just around the corner.

Jackie Magnin So

[DRUMMING MUSIC RETURNS – Bobbin Beats by Drumadore and Claran Theatre]

Ester Kiely so that was good.

Jackie Magnin We were totally bowled over.

Sister Madeleine Cleverly It just was

Giuliana Victor Harte we didn't know that Cong have a lace and

Sister Madeleine Cleverly sort of an ‘Aha!’ moment.

Jackie Magnin We know that bobbin lace was made in Ireland, extensively, but you never get to see it! You never get to see a piece of it at all. And besides the Headford lace, all of a sudden, there were these pieces that we knew that had been made there.

[DRUMMING MUSIC STOPS]

Eilís Nic Dhonncha We wanted to share the news with the ones back home, especially Norma.

Ester Kiely So we were taking pictures, we were asking permission, could we take pictures and share the information? So we were doing that and saying, “Look what we found here, Mrs. Dawson is associated with these seven pieces from Cong.”

Norma Owens And

Ester Kiely now, we knew

Norma Owens I had known that name

Ester Kiely early on, that we had a name Dawson in our story

Norma Owens because in 1902 a book called The History of Lace by Fanny Bury Palliser had been republished posthumously, and the editors had added a footnote that said that Headford lace had been undergoing a revival under the care of a Mrs. Dawson.

Ester Kiely and Mrs. Dawson was associated with reviving Headford lace

Norma Owens and I had been searching high and low from Mrs. Dawson

Ester Kiely so when we saw that these seven pieces were donated by, I think it's Amy Dawson, we thought, Oh my God, there's our Mrs. Dawson that helped revive Headford lace at one point. But because

Norma Owens I had been searching in County Galway

Ester Kiely we hadn't found her, so it had been a dead end for us.

Norma Owens But suddenly the discovery that she was a whole 15 kilometres north, in County Mayo, made me think w– I, I never checked the Mayo records.

Ester Kiely So Norma got excited and went Oh my God, that's the key!

Ger Henry Hassett So Norma started researching

Giuliana Victor Harte about

Norma Owens Umm

Giuliana Victor Harte Cong lace

Ester Kiely And off she went on her researching, then, back at home.

Norma Owens Immediately I did

Giuliana Victor Harte and she had done it!

Norma Owens like a whole new industry around Cong started to unfold.

Giuliana Victor Harte She just go to find out the history

Norma Owens that we hadn't been aware of at all.

Ester Kiely So I was driving home, so I didn't get the chance to read messages as I was driving back

Ger Henry Hassett and by the time we got down from Dublin

Giuliana Victor Harte suddenly I opened WhatsApp group

Ger Henry Hassett and there were literally

Giuliana Victor Harte it was over– more than a hundred messages

Ester Kiely Like 137 WhatsApp messages

Ger Henry Hassett about a hundred messages

[DRUMMING MUSIC STOPS]

Ger Henry Hassett on the WhatsApp

Ester Kiely from Norma

Giuliana Victor Harte it was popping like

Ger Henry Hassett by the time we got down

Giuliana Victor Harte Pop, pop, pop, pop… Jesus, what's going on, like?

Ester Kiely But you know, Norma's relentless once she starts at her research.

Giuliana Victor Harte We call her our little Sherlock Holmes, because she can find absolutely everything. She have a good, know [SNIFFING] she smell it, she smell the word ‘Headford’ and she’s go for it. And she find!

Ester Kiely and she's brilliant

Giuliana Victor Harte It’s

Ester Kiely you know, she really unearths things.

Giuliana Victor Harte it’s amazing.

Ester Kiely So she had gone on her usual research kick

Ger Henry Hassett on Mrs. Dawson in Cong, the whole story of her.

Ester Kiely And had found census information

Ger Henry Hassett where she came from, how she came to Cong

Ester Kiely she had found marriage records and

Ger Henry Hassett how she set up the lace industry

Ester Kiely death records

Ger Henry Hassett and so forth. She had found the whole trail of the lady.

Giuliana Victor Harte So we were so excited.

Ester Kiely The other thing that was interesting about these seven pieces of lace is they were torchon lace, which is a specific kind of bobbin lace. And that's the kind of lace that Headford lace is.

Norma Owens The torchon lace then, made at Cong, it was never known as ‘Headford lace’ even though, most likely it was an offshoot of the Headford lace industry. So the patterns are quite similar

Ester Kiely so they're typically geometric in design

Norma Owens but all of the edges on the Cong laces have picots, so there's teeny little loops all along the edge of the laces made in Cong, which doesn't feature on the one sample of Headford lace that we have, and the Headford lace has fans at the edge, which doesn't appear in any of the seven samples of the lace made at Cong that we have from the National Museum. But again, those are not really distinguishing traits. So–

Sister Madeleine Cleverly So there's still lots of threads to be followed and discoveries to be made. We still hope to find more examples of the Headford lace, because it seems that it was more well known, more prominent, than even the Cong laces.

[DRUMMING MUSIC RETURNS – Bobbin Beats by Drumadore and Claran Theatre]

Sister Madeleine Cleverly And somewhere, in Australia, or America, there's got to be some more pieces of extant Headford lace.

[DRUMMING MUSIC CRESCENDOES AND ENDS]

Ester Kiely You know, it was a great, it was a great day really, like it was really very exciting. We were completely, you know, nerded out on our research that night, you know.

Norma Owens And it was just, it came at the perfect time for me to kind of lift me out of that awful place that I had been in.

Eilís Nic Dhonncha Norma had thrown herself into researching Mrs. Dawson's life… and her death in 1876.

Norma Owens When I found her obituary and the newspaper, you know the way they do births, marriages, and death announcements, and I was reading through them and I realised that just a couple of lines above her death notice was a birth notice, for a son that was born to her stillborn, five days before her death, and she died from complications. And it's funny, because Ger always mentions this quote about, “We hold invisible hands with those who have gone down in history.” And there was just that connection between me having lost my twins and her losing both her, you know, her son and then her own life. And, yeah it, it just– I haven't been able to let go of the history ever since, it's just really gripped me. And I think part of it is unfortunately the results came back that we would have had better chances of winning a really rare lottery, than we– just the genetic combination of my husband and I, it's not going to happen for us. And I think I have been ever since looking for a way to sort of leave a legacy of some sort. And I know this is just a small thing, but just being able to revive the history, and those women that were forgotten, and trying to make sure that they won't be forgotten again – that sort of draws me to the history.

[MUSIC STARTS – The Whileaways Toss the Bobbin (vocal version)]

Nicola Joyce, The Whileaways (SINGING) The sun rose in the morning, went down at its own pace, and the women of Headford made lace…

Norma Owens A huge focus for me in the project has been to give those women a name again, and to acknowledge the contribution that they have made to our cultural heritage of the town. And we’ve so far only identified 13 of those lacemakers – [COUNTING FROM A LIST] Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen – 14! I forgot I found one last week. So we have Mrs. Mary Burke, Miss Sarah Walsh, Mrs. Margaret Higgins, Miss Honor Malie, Miss Mary O’Shaughnessy, Miss Anne Hogan, Miss Margaret Casey, Miss Mary Connell, Miss Ellen Keane, Miss Mary Redington, Miss Julia Casey, Mrs. Catherine Parker, a lady unfortunately only known as “Cáit bodhar”, deaf Kate, and a Miss Lee, whose first name I still have not been able to find. It's a work in progress.

Nicola Joyce, The Whileaways (SINGING) …Honor is my name, and I work these hands with pride, from across the lake, now my family’s by my side, and I make my living here, a few pennies at a time…

[JACKIE MAGNIN GIVING A LACEMAKING TUTORIAL] Hello, my name is Jackie Magnin and I am your tutor to show you through the beginnings of bobbin lacemaking…

[SOUNDS OF A GROUP AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND]

Jackie Magnin I always look forward to coming here very much. Yes, when I'm teaching a class I'm on my feet for most of the day, and I don't get tired, because I get so much feedback, people I just so enthusiastic, they are so interested in learning, that I get that as much energy back from them as what I put into it myself.

[JACKIE MAGNIN GIVING A LACEMAKING TUTORIAL] …Now, the first thing you will need is a pillow. Pillows were made in different shapes and sizes…

Colette Kelly Bobbin lace is one of the laces I hadn't done, I had never done bobbin lace, I always thought it was way beyond me.

Ger Henry Hassett Head-wrecking!

Colette Kelly And I was like two left hands.

Ger Henry Hassett It's head-wrecking for me because it's going right to left, to left to right, and it doesn't sit well in my brain. It’s– I think, I think maybe you have to have more mechanic– of a mathematical brain to work it.

Colette Kelly And I do remember one of the teachers saying at the course, she said, she said that day, she said, “You know,” she said, “this can be addictive.” They said, “Well now we have a follow on course in Headford, so I went out there. Well, very soon I did find it addictive, you know – she was right.

Kathleen McMahon Well, the one thing I will say is that that lacemaking was a gateway craft for me. I can't stop, completely addicted. My name is Kathleen McMahon. I'm a committee member on the Headford Lace Project, I’m a gardener, I– animal husbandry, things like that. My– I didn't think I had the finesse or delicacy that I thought was needed to make lace. And then once I got going, I was like, something just tripped a light, and it all just became perfectly clear

[SOUNDS START OF BOBBIN LACEMAKING – WOODEN BOBBINS RATTLING TOGETHER AND BEING DROPPED ONTO THE PILLOW AS THEIR THREADS ARE CROSSED AND TWISTED]

[MUSIC ENDS]

Kathleen McMahon that it's all just about connectivity and mindfulness and paying attention to what's right in front of you–

Ger Henry Hassett Craft is freeing for the mind and it's relaxing for the body, cos you're sitting quietly

Kathleen McMahon and my brain was just buzzing for days afterwards, and I haven't stopped since then. Now, I'm still making bookmarks, but it’s all good.

Ger Henry Hassett and generally I wouldn't have noise, music or anything, on. I would just be sitting in the quiet

Norma Owens and then

Ger Henry Hassett and it's peaceful

Norma Owens once you get into it

Ger Henry Hassett so that’s my experience of it

Ester Kiely it stills your mind

Norma Owens it’s a sort of

Ester Kiely particularly when

Norma Owens & Ester Kiely it’s a repetitive

Norma Owens action

Ester Kiely thing that you're familiar with

Norma Owens which in itself is sort of

Ester Kiely then you know

Norma Owens um

Ester Kiely and you're comfortable doing

Norma Owens calming

Ester Kiely once you're doing that

Norma Owens but then also

Ester Kiely you're no longer really thinking about all the other things that might be popping into your head.

Norma Owens you're making something beautiful at the same time. So you have that creative expression and it's, it's a beautiful blend of those two things that is just really alluring.

Sister Madeleine Cleverly Lacemaking is very conducive to the contemplative atmosphere

Norma Owens You know, I lose time, I get hungry and I'm wondering why I'm hungry and I realise I’ve sat making lace for three or four hours. And, you know

Sister Madeleine Cleverly it's totally consuming

Norma Owens forgotten to have my lunch or something

Sister Madeleine Cleverly all consuming of your thoughts

Norma Owens It's a strange altered state for me almost, you know, when you get into the rhythm of it

Sister Madeleine Cleverly the cares of your every day drop away

Norma Owens It's, it's like when you learn to drive, you know, you have to think about clutching and where's my next gear, and slowly that off my clutch and accelerate, and

Sister Madeleine Cleverly I mean, nuns have cares too, you know, are you going to get this done? Is– We have the same kind of cares as other people, being anxious about this, being worried about that

Norma Owens when you get used to driving, you're just admiring the scenery and of course watching the road. But you know, you're not thinking about the mechanics of what you're doing as much, and it's the same with lacemaking

Sister Madeleine Cleverly and these kind of things drop away, and there's a peace and rest that you have in the present moment.

Norma Owens keeping an eye on the view more.

[BOBBIN SOUNDS END]

[SOUNDS RETURN OF A GROUP AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND]

[JACKIE MAGNIN GIVING A LACEMAKING TUTORIAL] Now, we’re needing a bit of working thread, and then we need that same length again…

Ger Henry Hassett Now, the other thing about the craft, when people get together in groups to do it, that's a lovely social occasion, and people talk, and it's so important to talk, and they might air a concern or two, and the collective knowledge of all women there might be able to help them out. So it's, it's really good–

[MUSIC RETURNS – The Whileaways Toss the Bobbin (vocal version)]

Ger Henry Hassett –mental health practice to sit and craft together. It's really good for us.

[NORMA OWENS AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] I’m thinking I made a mistake a moment ago, and I'm about to make the same one again, and I can’t see another option.

[GIULIANA VICTOR HARTE TALKING TO GER HENRY HASSETT OVER THE CRAFT TABLE AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] …Do you have any scissor there, Ger?…

Ester Kiely You know, we often joke about, well, we don't do much lace, but we still, you know– every get-together is good, whether or not you’re creating something, or whether or not you're making lace.

[NORMA OWENS AND SISTER MADELEINE TALKING OVER THE CRAFT TABLE AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] …Easy when you know how…

Ester Kiely You know, very often

[NORMA OWENS AND SISTER MADELEINE TALKING OVER THE CRAFT TABLE AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] …It’s easy when you know how…

Ester Kiely we wonder, you know,

[NORMA OWENS AND SISTER MADELEINE TALKING OVER THE CRAFT TABLE AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] …Everything’s easy when you know how…

Ester Kiely you know, is lace really the whole point of the thing at all? Maybe not.

[NORMA OWENS AND SISTER MADELEINE TALKING OVER THE CRAFT TABLE AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] …scrolls are not easy… No… I’m here to tell you that scrolls are not easy.

[NORMA OWENS AND SISTER MADELEINE TALKING OVER THE CRAFT TABLE AT A LACEMAKING WEEKEND] … I’m here to agree with you, wholeheartedly… it’s a fairly advanced technique…

Eilís Nic Dhonncha You've been listening to The Headford Lace Story. Almost all the music you heard was made in Headford, inspired by the story of the lace. A heartfelt thanks to Drumadore and Claran Theatre for letting us use their track, Bobbin Beats; to Mairéad Berrill and Headford Music Works for the Lace Threads orchestral piece; and special thanks to The Whileaways for Where the Black River Flows and Toss the Bobbin. Thanks also to Gloriae de Cantores Schola for permission to use their recording of Caritas Dei. The Headford Lace Story was presented by me, Eilís Nic Dhonncha, and produced by Ed Coulson for Claremorris Community Radio.

The Whileaways (SINGING) Toss the bobbin and around the pin, these hands will work to feed our kin, toss the bobbin and around the pin, steady moving as I sing… The sun rose in the morning, went down at its own pace, and the women of Headford made lace.

[MUSIC REDUCES TO A SINGLE HELD NOTE ON STRINGS]

[SOUNDS OF NORMA OWENS MAKING LACE AT HOME]

Norma Owens So you cross and twist the bobbins all the time, working with the pins. You’ll always get into tangles; it's how you get out of them that matters.

[MUSIC ENDS]